Biomedical subjects

R Wollert

Publications and source records attributed to R Wollert.

6 recordsLinked to original sources

PubMed2001

An analysis of the argument that clinicians under-predict sexual violence in civil commitment cases.

This paper presents the results of an analysis that evaluated the assumptions and arguments set forth in a recent paper (Doren, 1998), which concluded that clinicians under-predict the risk that candidates for commitment as dangerous sex offenders will recidivate. This analysis indicates that such a conclusion is untenable because almost all of the assertions on which it is based might be disputed in one way or another. These flaws undermine the paper's value as a source of secondary authority in hearings pertaining to the commitment of dangerous sex offenders. Nonetheless, its publication will probably be beneficial for professional practice in this arena because it raises several important issues that stand in need of resolution.

Adolescent↗

PubMed1989

Validation of a measure of perfectionism.

This article describes perfectionism, or the holding of and striving for unrealistically high standards, and presents two studies undertaken to investigate the convergent, discriminant, and predictive validity of the Perfectionism Scale (PS; Burns, 1980). College students in the first study completed the PS, several other measures of high standards, and measures of constructs that, conceptually, are differentially related to perfectionism. Correlational analyses indicated that the Perfectionism Scale has convergent and discriminant validity and seems to measure self-oriented perfectionism. The second study attempted to determine the predictive validity of the PS by testing a vulnerability model of subclinical depression outlined in Hewitt and Dyck (1986). PS scores were used to predict depressed mood changes in female college students following failure on important and unimportant tasks. As expected, the results indicated that perfectionism interacted with failure on important versus unimportant tasks to produce dysphoric mood. Evidence for the predictive validity of the PS was thus shown. Several directions for future research are discussed.

Adult↗

PubMed1988

An evaluation of a communications training program within a self-help group for sexually abusive families.

Remediating the dysfunctional communications patterns of sexually abusive families is an important step in treating them. No communications training program for such families has been evaluated, however. This paper describes an evaluation of a communications training program carried out within the context of a self-help group for sexually abusive families. Group members were randomly assigned to receive an eight-week communications training program or to continue participating at self-help meetings. No group differences were apparent on a preintervention communications questionnaire, but the posttraining scores of experimental subjects were higher than controls. Experimental subjects maintained these scores upon follow-up and the scores of controls increased when the program was administered to them by a student therapist. It is suggested that the procedures and findings of this study contribute to the community mental health field by a) underscoring communications concepts that are helpful to abusive families; b) modeling a novel design for evaluating interventions that includes self-help participation as a nonspecific treatment; and c) illustrating the value of collaborative efforts between self-help groups and human services providers when they serve their mutual interests.

Adult↗

PubMed1987

The self-help clearinghouse concept: an evaluation of one program and its implications for policy and practice.

Many clearinghouses have been organized within the last decade to promote mutual aid and to provide referral information about self-help groups to potential members. Few of the assumptions that underpin the operation of these programs have been evaluated, however. This paper presents an evaluation of the Self-Help Information Service, a clearinghouse integrated with a generic information and referral service. The results were generally positive with respect to operator and consumer satisfaction, community responsiveness, and the system's capacity to undertake numerous service and research functions. They also pointed up several changes that might be made to improve the system's impact. It is concluded that a new practice specialty might be developed within a clearinghouse context, and that the clearinghouse concept might serve as one cornerstone of a funding policy that supports the self-help approach.

Consumer Behavior↗

PubMed1987

Self-help clearing-houses in North America: a survey of their structural characteristics and community health implications.

Self-help groups hold the potential for helping many people adjust to health difficulties and life stresses. Self-help clearing-houses represent a community-centred approach to developing and realizing this potential. Several papers describing specific clearing-houses have been published, but a comprehensive survey of these organizations has not yet been completed. This article reports the results of such a survey, in which a majority of existing North American clearing-houses participated. Clearing-houses were found to have evolved rapidly in the last ten years, to the point that they now provide an array of informational, educational, and consultative services to catchment areas that contain over 70 million people. Although clearing-houses offer a unique perspective on the self-help movement and may make important contributions to physical and mental health, they also face technical, philosophical, and funding issues. Considering their tenacity and the robust rate at which they are being established, however, it seems likely that these and other problems will be solved, and that clearing-houses will become an established feature of the human services landscape.

Attitude to Health↗

PubMed1983

Causal attributions, sanctions, and normal mood variations.

The causal-locus hypothesis (CLH) asserts that persons making internal attributions for failure and external attributions for success experience more negative postoutcome moods than persons making the opposite attributions. Three experiments assessed the CLH. Although outcomes consistently affected moods and attributions, attributions did not affect moods. Significant correlations consistent with the CLH were also infrequently obtained. Another theory, the sanctioned-object hypothesis (SOH), was proposed for understanding how causal attributions lead to mood changes. This hypothesis asserts that the application of positive or negative sanctions to objects in the perceptual field is a central determinant of mood and that attributions affect mood when their content and salience activate sanctioning processes. A fourth experiment evaluated the competing theories. The results supported the SOH but not the CLH. The findings are discussed in terms of their implications for understanding mood variations and the effects that moods have on the construction of attributions and for adopting methodological alternatives that may be valuable for future laboratory research studying mood variations.

Affective Symptoms↗